somewhere under the counter between them a radio crackled on and an amplified voice said something Steiner couldn't catch. Before he was able to ask the nurse anything, she picked up a microphone from under the counter, and said, "How is he?" A wash of static went through Steiner like a further form of anxiety, and again he couldn't make out a word. The nurse studied him with set lips, appraising him, and said, "There are no marks on him, they say" -as if she knew what he needed to hear-"but he ., ." Isn t conSCIOUS. N ow Steiner saw James swerve toward the granary near the drive, with J en keeping up and with one daughter holding James's hand and the other grabbing at her mother's skirt. The tractor sat in the unmowed grass ahead. Steiner turned from them into a flash like a press camera) s-the mirror in the rear of the station wagon reflecting sun into his eyes. He leaned against the automobile, unable to stop this sequence that kept returning: the stretcher tilting from the ambulance, James's blue face against sheets, J en squalling up in the station wagon and running over in riding denims, the girls running after her, and then the glass doors to the hospital springing open with a hiss; hearing this and the clattering of all the footsteps but no sound of a voice. Then the stretcher rolled close, and he could hear James going, "0 hhh, ohh," in shallow sighs. J en embraced Steiner with an impact that set him off balance, and cried, "I t's my fault!" "N 0," Steiner said, holding her so hard that the snaps of her jacket dug into his chest. The stretcher paused, as if the ambulance attendants were waiting for a command, and Steiner turned, one arm still around J en, and tried to locate James's hand under the blanket and discovered that James was stràpped to some sort of hard-plastic carrier. Two swelling, padded curves gripped his jaw on each side, and straps were buckled across his forehead and near his neck. " I ' D d I , h " S . . d t sa, mere, teiner sal , and thought he heard a catch in James's breathing. Good God, he thought, and closed his eyes and understood that each "oh" from James was an attempt to cry out in pain, and felt that if he could enter James and bear this mo- j 37 @ C00 (lÃJLW,^-, "I'm telling you, Harper, we're in the wrong business.)) . ment for him the boy would rise from the stretcher and walk away. Then the doctor, a French-Vietnamese who had taken over a local quarter-horse ranch, was in the midst of them, looking like a jockey in a torn red T-shirt, saying to an ambulance attendant, "you thought a spinal injury?" He quickly undid the buckle near James's neck to help him breathe more freely, and the attendant said, "In case." "Here," the doctor said, and grabbed the head of the stretcher and pulled it into a side room himself-as if to be free of the attendants-and over to an examining table. "Dad and Mom, here," he said, and when an attendant with a full beard attempted to block the door, he called, "No! I want them in here to help, answer questions! What's h . "'" IS namer " J " ames. "James! Can you hear me?" J ames lay inert, expressionless, ivory) and beneath the overhead lights Steiner saw the boy's lips tugging with inner pain. The nurse helped the doctor slide J ames and the board onto the exam- ining table, and the doctor probed his neck and skull and took a flashlight from the nurse and looked into James's eyes, drawing his lids high with a . thumb, and then, with a tool, scraped the soles of both feet, hammered at James's knees and elbows, drew the tool up his sternum, and said, "Get X . k " upper -rays, qUIC . To Steiner he said, "I'm going to give him some oxygen through a nasal cannula here," already tearing open a sack. A coil of blue-tinted plastic fell from it over the boy's bare legs, pale and dirt-smeared. Why was he wear- ing shorts to ride? Steiner almost shouted, and felt a hand on his back. Billy Allen stood with a hat over his chest, chin trembling, and said, "I should have been there to help. Call my insurance company. Sue me." The elderly man looked almost in tears, and one of the ambulance attendants led him into the hall. "That's all I can do," the doctor said. "I see head injury but no sign of it. He's not posing or putting on dis- plays of extensive damage, but is co- matose, you see. I'm running quick X-rays"-the machine above them clicked on, humming, and the doctor glanced at it and shrugged. "I'm send- ing him to the city hospital. You'll want all the attention he can-" Steiner swooped for James, who had grabbed the side of the table to pull